OPCW wins Nobel Peace Prize

The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the body overseeing the destruction of Syria's chemical weapons, won the Nobel Peace Prize in a surprise announcement.

It was honoured "for its extensive efforts to eliminate chemical weapons," Nobel Committee chairman Thorbjoern Jagland said on Friday.

"Recent events in Syria, where chemical weapons have again been put to use, have underlined the need to enhance the efforts to do away with such weapons," the jury said in its statement.

On patrol: A UN chemical weapons expert, wearing a gas mask, holds a plastic bag containing samples from one of the sites of an alleged chemical weapons attack in the Ain Tarma neighbourhood of Damascus. Photo: Reuters

The Hague-based organisation was founded in 1997 to implement the Chemical Weapons Convention signed on January 13, 1993.

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It has spent years in relative obscurity, until it was recently thrust into the limelight by the Syrian crisis.

From Russia to the United States, Iraq and Libya, inspectors from the Hague-based organisation have been slowly but surely destroying the world's most dangerous chemical stockpiles.

OPCW Director-General Ahmet Uzumcu. Photo: AFP

Syria last month signed up to the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), which the OPCW enforces, agreeing to hand over its chemical weapons for destruction under a Russia-US plan aimed at averting US-led military strikes on the country in the wake of a devastating chemical attack on a Damascus suburb.

President Bashar al-Assad's regime is accused of using the chemicals in an August 21 attack that killed hundreds of people on the outskirts of Damascus. He has denied the charge.

This is the second year in a row that the Peace Prize has been awarded to an organisation, following last year when the European Union took home the honour.

An 18-carat gold Nobel Peace Prize medal. Photo: Reuters

The Nobel Prize consists of a gold medal, a diploma and a prize sum of eight million Swedish kronor ($1.27 million).

Previously one of only five countries not to have signed the global treaty, Syria accepted the Russian proposal last month to sign up and has so far won rare praise for cooperating with OPCW's inspectors, who are already hard at work.

Ahead of the surprise announcement, the organisation said it preferred to focus on the task in Syria rather than any jubilation.

"We don't want to give any impression that we're focused on anything else than other than this mission," OPCW spokesman Michael Luhan said.

The organisation is expected to hold a press conference later on Friday.

The OPCW began work in 1997 and has overseen the destruction of some 57,000 metric tonnes of chemical weapons, mostly US and Russian arsenals.

"It's the slow steady laying down of bricks over the weeks, months and years, people sitting in control rooms watching this stuff going into the chutes," Mr Luhan said.

"It's our persistence, without any fanfare ... it's the slow grinding work that we hope over time will be more appreciated."

The OPCW's work was the "subject of years and years of patient diplomacy in which we've demonstrated that we do diplomacy very, very well. We've kept everybody aboard, we keep adding States Parties, we're approaching universality."

But Mr Luhan said he did not want the Nobel Peace Prize award to overshadow the dangerous mission in Syria.

"We don't want to be seen as a one-note song," he said.

Chemical weapons were first used in combat in World War I, and again in 1988 against civilians in Halabja, Iraq, with the Chemical Weapons Convention finally drawn up in 1993 in Paris.

Israel and Myanmar have signed the Convention but not ratified it, while Angola, Egypt, North Korea and South Sudan have done neither.

Syria last month applied to join the Convention and it officially comes into effect in the war-ravaged nation on Monday.